Tribal rights activists are
celebrating the notification of the Forest Rights Act. Opponents of the
law, including many noted wildlife enthusiasts, see it as the last nail
in the coffin for India's forests. Shankar Gopalakrishnan and
Lakshmy Raman slug it out

There was a time when the English media
had never heard of forests or forest dwellers. Now that has
changed. In the last two years, the newspapers have been rife
with arguments that India's forests are being sold, parcelled out,
hived off or destroyed. TV channels run public interest ads with
forlorn children lamenting the loss of India's natural heritage.

The source of all this sound and fury
is a new legislation, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest
Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Contrary to
the allegations made against it, this Act has nothing to do with
"distributing" or "handing out" forests or forest land to people.
It is about recognising the rights of forest communities

Millions of people live in forests and
have
done so for generations, but most are deemed "encroachers" because they
aren't on record. Forest management plans and wildlife protection
plans ignore them. Official policy sees them as obstacles,
inconveniences at best and criminals at worst, and tries to evict or
resettle them where possible.

But this hasn't worked. Our
wildlife is disappearing. Poachers are free to move when there
are no people; they even get help from impoverished locals, while
forest guards turn corrupt because it is so easy to extort money from
these same locals. Meanwhile, forests erupt in violence as people
turn against the official "conservation" that subjects them to such
brutality. The result? Animals, forests and people die, in what
the Tiger Task Force called the "war within".

This law is the first step towards
addressing this situation. It does not distribute lands. It only
recognises the rights of forest dwellers over land that they are
already cultivating, with a cutoff date of December 13, 2005 (in the
case of tribals; non-tribals have to additionally prove that they have
resided in the forest for 75 years). It also recognises their
rights to other forest resources. Further, it recognises their
right to protect the forests and wildlife that are their homelands.

This last right is the key. Tens
of thousands of villages across India today are defending forests and
wildlife against mafias and the government – as in Orissa, where the
Dongaria Kondh tribals are fighting to keep their sacred mountain from
being destroyed by the Vedanta mining corporation. In current
law, this is a crime, and people have been arrested, jailed and
sometimes killed for doing it. This Act would for the first time
make this a legal right.

But this is not just one more legal
proviso. It is a pointer to the
fundamental issue in the struggle. This law does not pit people
against forests. It takes the first faltering steps towards a
more democratic, more just system of forest management, as against
colonial principles of total, centralised control. Those who so
fiercely oppose this law tend to assume that the only way to protect a
forest is to make sure that all control is kept in the hands of a few.
This does not work, and it cannot work. Five lakh hectares
of forest have been destroyed in the last five years alone under the
current centralised system, in which no one can hold the government
accountable.

It is not that this law does not have
flaws. Powerful interests have managed to dilute some key
democratic aspects of the law. But to attack this law in this
manner, to seek to restore the once-omnipotent forest bureaucracy to
its pedestal, is not to defend the forests. It is to strengthen
those for whom both forests and forest dwellers are commodities – to be
sold when valuable and to be brushed aside when not.

(Shankar Gopalakrishnan is a
representative of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a collective
of organisations fighting for the recognition of the rights of
traditional forest dwellers and indigenous peoples.)

Declining tiger
populations, degraded forest corridors, sanctions for ports and mines,
and unsustainable tourism practices – those responsible for wildlife
management have undoubtedly failed us on many counts. However,
providing land rights in forested areas, particularly Protected Areas,
even under the guise of recognising the rights of forest dwellers, will
mean jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Allowing land rights
would work if these were low-density populations with minimal forest
dependence. The Forest Rights Act offers instant gratification without
considering the long-term implications on global climate change, on our
environment, biodiversity, water security, and the future of the same
forest-dwelling people that it claims to benefit. Estimates for CO2
emissions from total forest conversion, which will be triggered by the
FRA, range from 4.8 billion tonnes to 6.25 billion tonnes.
Deforestation is already responsible for an estimated 18% of greenhouse
gas emissions globally (Stern Review), and over 26% in India. How will
large tribal communities be able to protect forests and use them in a
sustainable manner when even stringent laws, in the face of vested
interests, have not been completely effective?

Increasing human-animal
conflict is already a huge problem, one bound to increase if forest
dwellers are given land rights. How can one presume that corruption is
prevalent only in forest departments and will not afflict gram sabhas?
There is no guarantee that these lands will not be resold to commercial
interests.

While there are examples
of forested areas where tribals have fought large corporations, there
are also several examples where encroachment and poaching have been
instigated by locals. Consider the Kawal Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh
where locals have encroached large tracts of forest and destroyed
thousands of trees.

Our forests and wildlife
are indeed the inheritance of our children – ads showing their loss if
the FRA is implemented have got it right. Wildlifers and social
activists need to work together to fight the common enemies –
large-scale commercial projects, international poaching gangs and real
estate and timber mafias. There is no universal formula and the focus
must be to work on a case-by-case basis. The power balance is
overwhelmingly against forests and wildlife and the decisions we take
will decide their and our fate.